Summer in the city

One more week of camp, one week of hanging around, then school starts! The kids and I have been in serious preparation mode. Last week I went to my favourite secondhand joint, Value Village, and, while looking for girlie T-shirts for Elaine, found her a pair of brand new hot pink snow pants, for $8. They'll look like heck with her pale lilac jacket, but for 8 bucks, who's worried?

(Um, yes, I also picked up 4 balls of dishcloth cotton and a few vintage patterns. The cotton will be great for gifts for those people who don't like to mess up their nice handknit dishcloths, since it looks like it's been used for washing dishes for a year, and I haven't even taken the ball bands off yet. It's called Potpourri ombre, for those who like to know. The pattern selection was not great, but I got a book of shawls for 69 cents. Shawls are apparently only for wrapping babies in, and not for flinging over your adult shoulders, but I think we can work around that.)

Then we ventured into the men's shoe department at Payless Shoes, because Arthur's great galumphing hooves are now too big for the kids' shoes. He's set now, just has to practise tying laces. A stop at MEC for pants, and a jacket for Arthur (Mom found a T-shirt for herself on sale, too!) and we're more or less done. I hope it snows a lot this winter. Arthur's new jacket doesn't have a hood, so, although the house is full of hats and scarves, I'm open to the possibility I'll have to make him something. And all agree that while knitted mitts are fine in England, here we need waterproof ones. Didn't think of that till we were on the streetcar home from MEC, but we've a few months to remedy that, I think.

Sunday we went to the subway station to buy a new pass for me for this week (since I take the kids to camp, come home, go get them and then come home again, a weekly pass makes sense!) and decided to get on the subway and go to High Park. Walked past the animals, played on the giant castle-like play structure, had a hot dog, walked in the woods to the streetcar loop. I took pictures -- one of a moulting peacock, and this one of Arthur's new shoes. Then my battery died, so you don't get to see the llamas (which of course made us sing the song for the next few hours) or the yak or the mountain goats, or even the castle. But, you can see all those things, in the winter, on someone's Flickr page.

On the subway there we met a woman who was crocheting a blanket. I know, roll your eyes, what could be worse than a crocheted blanket, but no! It was all one colour and a nice roundy-flowery pattern and looked really fine. I showed her my sock... Then I was sitting on one of the grown-up seats at the playground (all good playgrounds have a place for the parents to sit and watch, but not actually get in the way) and a kid came by, maybe 4 or 5 years old. "What's that? Are you knitting? Is it a mitten?" all at once. See, you meet the nicest people, knitting in public.

This afternoon, the dentist...